The power of words, misused.

by nonewsisnew

It is very common in the news to spin stories through the manipulation of language to sell papers. The above story is a great example to look at that spin. In the story a man and a woman had sex without being married. As both were supposed to follow Catholic teaching to keep their jobs at a Catholic school, both were fired.

The story is written as a David verses Goliath story. Evil Goliath Church arbitrarily enforcing their arbitrary morality on an innocent David couple, who simply love each other. As it is written, “the firings ‘come off as incredibly hard and callous’ in juxtaposition with a couple in love”.

Looking past the formulaic writing, let’s look at what the Church teaches about love to see how this couple of haters shouldn’t be exposing school kids to their hate; and how they are not a couple which shows love to each other.

Love is so much more than “Baby Don’t Hurt Me.”

It is hateful to lie to someone, yet in having sex without marriage that is exactly what this couple was doing. In their actions they were expressing, “I give myself wholly to you”, yet in their words they did not make this commitment by marriage, so either their mind or heart was holding something back. This is not love, as love is a gift of self. The fact this couple mistook this lieing for love shows how poorly they were living up to their contractual commitment to teach the faith to children. If they were telling people they loved each other, but then lied to each other, then they are quite terrible roll models.

In our society love is becoming confused with what is meant to sustain it, like a plant being confused with the warm light meant to keep it alive. Feelings and sexual gratification are meant to sustain the commitment and self-sacrifice that is love. When we chase after the feelings and gratification we end up with neither, but when we seek out service of our spouse we receive those feelings to support that loving gift of self. Call it the Benjamin Franklin effect in action — go Science!

When the couple in the story mistook sexual gratification for love, they became haters. They selfishly went after the action that gave themselves pleasure without the commitment which that sexual pleasure is an expression of. One might posit the cruelty they must have in exposing children to such selfish actions; if one thought they had any awareness that what they were doing was wrong. In our world the word “love” is so misunderstood that one cannot help but feel pity instead of hostility. Love reduced to a feeling is but an empty shell of it’s true power, and it is sad that this shrivelled and lonely “love” is all they are seeking. To attain self-mastery through the self-sacrifice of service to another is so much more liberating than the crushing slavery that is the pursuit of pleasure.